In the printing industry, it is common to provide a physical sample of a printed image to a client for approval prior to printing a large number of copies of the image. One type of sample print is known in the industry as a press sheet. The press sheet is an image printed by a printer that will be used to print the large number of copies of a printed output. The press sheet is evaluated by the client and/or the printer to determine whether the printer is set up to print an output that has a desirable/acceptable appearance. One limitation of this process is that the client and/or printer must physically review the press sheet to make this determination. However, it is often difficult to present such a press sheet to a client, particularly, when a great distance separates the printer and the client. Further, it is expensive to print one press sheet or a small number of press sheets using high volume output devices of the type used to print large quantities of an image.
Alternatively, a physical sample can be provided in the form of a proof. A proof is an image printed by a printer other than the high volume output device and is intended to have an appearance that matches the appearance of a printed output of the same image as printed by the high volume output device. Typically, such proofs are printed by digital color printers. Such digital color printers print color prints of images that have been encoded in the form of digital data. This digital data includes code values indicating the colors to be printed in an image. When a digital color printer generates the printed output of an image, it is intended that the image recorded on the printed output will contain the exact colors called for by the code values in the digitally encoded data. In theory, such an image should also have an appearance that matches the appearance of the image printed by a high volume output device.
However, in practice, it has been found that the colors in the images printed by digital color printers do not always match the colors printed by high volume output devices. Such color variations can be caused by difference in the ink/toner, substrate/paper and printing techniques used in the digital printer and in the high-volume output device. Accordingly, special digital color printers have been developed that can be color adjusted so that they can mimic the performance of high volume output devices. Such specially adjusted color printers are known in the industry as “proofers”. An example of such “proofer” is the Approval NX Digital Halftone Proofing System developed and manufactured by Kodak and sold by Kodak Polychrome Graphics, Rochester, N.Y., U.S.A. The Approval NX Digital Halftone Proofing System is specially designed so that it prints images that have an appearance that precisely mimics the appearance of a digital image that will be printed using a high volume output device using agreed upon settings. In this way, a consumer can be provided with a proof that reliably represents the appearance of the same image, as it will appear when printed by a high volume output device.
It will be appreciated however that this system, while commercially successful and highly valuable, does not enable a consumer to evaluate an actual image printed by the actual high volume printer that will print the job. Accordingly, day-to-day variations that might arise in the operation of such a high volume printer are not always accounted for. Further, this also requires that the proof printed by the proofer is manually delivered to the consumer for evaluation and that the consumer manually provide some form of authorization in response thereto. This can introduce the risk of unnecessary delays and communication errors. These factors can also lead to consumer dissatisfaction and extra expenses.
One approach to solving this problem is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,707,931, entitled “Remote Print Press Proofing System” filed by Herbert on Apr. 26, 2002. In the '931 patent, a system for image sharing is described that has two embodiments. In one embodiment, a physical sample is printed by the high volume output device, removed therefrom, and taken to a digitizing device which can be a scanner, camera, camera scan back, or other digitizer. For example, FIG. 1 of the '931 patent provides a digitizer in the form of a stand-alone flat bed scanner that is a component of a scanning and image sharing system. The scanning and image sharing system is adapted to color correct the scanned image and to share the scanned image with a remote display device to allow a remote user to determine whether the physical sample has a desirable appearance. In the first example of the '931 patent, the user manually reviews the image and provides audio or verbal feedback to the printer who makes modifications to the digital image and provides a revised digital image to the consumer for review. Thus, in this approach, the consumer cannot judge the actual impact that the requested changes will have on the printed image.
In an alternative approach described in the '931 patent, the remote user is provided with an electronic image that is intended to represent what will be printed by the high volume printer based upon known color printing characteristics of the high volume printer. When the electronic image is transmitted to a remote user for presentation on a soft display, such as a CRT or LCD, the image is color corrected so that the image presented to the remote user has an appearance that corresponds to the predicted appearance of the image as it will be printed by the high-volume printer. If the remote user desires changes, the remote user can send signals to the image server requesting such changes and the remote server will simulate the effects of such changes and return a second electronic image to the remote user. This process can be iteratively repeated allowing the remote user to make any number of modifications to the image. When the user transmits an acceptance, the printing device will then print an image in accordance with the electronic image.
A central limitation of such a system is that it requires visual analysis of each image by a user and, of course, such analysis can be subject to human error. A further central limitation of such systems is that there is no inherent integration between the operation of the press and the scanning, evaluation, and feedback process, thus increasing the amount of time required to generate, share, evaluate, and make changes to a press sheet and to make corrections, or adjustments to the operation of the press of the '931 patent.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a more integrated system that enables rapid, accurate and automatic evaluation of an image printed by a high-volume output device to facilitate the process of detecting conditions in the printed image that do not conform to conditions called for by data in digital image data upon which the printed image is based that are of interest, so that proper adjustments can be made in the operation of the high-volume output device in a cost efficient and timely fashion.